Coffea arabica
Arabica ~57% of world cropEvery variety name on a specialty bag lives inside this one species.
Opens up below ↓Reference · from the genus to the name on the bag
Coffee species, and the varieties inside them.
Three species are farmed at any scale, and almost everything you drink is one of two of them. Everything else printed on a bag — Bourbon, Typica, Gesha, Caturra, Catuaí, Castillo — is a variety of a single species, Coffea arabica. This is the whole tree, with what each branch tends to taste like.
Lineage
Landraces
Typica line
Bourbon line
Introgressed (robusta DNA)
Coffea
the genus · 133 accepted species
Coffea canephora
Robusta ~43% of world cropCultivars rather than varieties, and usually sold by country.
Coffea liberica
Liberica ~1–2%, with excelsaNo named varieties in trade. Sold by species and origin.
Coffea dewevrei
Excelsa own species since 2025Same: you buy the species, not a variety of it.
Inside Coffea arabica
Four branches. Two came out of Yemen and drifted apart; one never left the Ethiopian forests; the fourth is the one that borrowed genes from robusta in order to survive leaf rust.
Ethiopian & South Sudanese landraces
Collected from forest populations. Never bred, only found.
Gesha / Geisha
landrace Gori Gesha forest, Ethiopia · 1936 → Costa Rica → Panama, 1960sJasmine and bergamot, peach and papaya, a tea-like body and a very long floral finish. Wants real altitude, yields badly, and prices itself accordingly.
Ethiopian heirloom
landrace Kurume, Dega, Wolisho, JARC 74110 & 74112 — thousands more unnamedWashed: citrus, bergamot, jasmine, a delicate body. Natural: blueberry and strawberry over a much heavier sweetness. The same plants, two different answers.
Rume Sudan
landrace Boma Plateau, South Sudan · 1941Almost never sold on its own — a great cup on a hopeless yield. It reaches you as one parent of Centroamericano.
The Typica line
One plant out of Yemen, mutating its way around the tropics.
Typica
the original Yemen → Java, 1696 → Amsterdam → the AmericasClean, sweet and delicate: mild acidity, light body, elegant rather than loud. Low-yielding, and it catches every disease going.
Maragogipe
mutation of Typica Bahia, Brazil · 1870The elephant bean, two to three times normal size. Soft and mild, low acidity, gentle sweetness — more texture than fireworks.
Blue Mountain
Typica selection Jamaica · also grown in Kenya and Papua New GuineaMild, balanced, nutty-sweet, low acidity. A good cup that has been sold on its name for a very long time.
Pache
mutation of Typica Santa Rosa, Guatemala · 1949A natural dwarf. Simple and sweet, low acidity, soft body — easy to grow and easy to drink.
Kent · Criollo · San Ramón · Mokka
Typica selections India, Latin America, YemenRegional names and dwarf mutations of the same plant. Mokka's tiny beans are the outlier: concentrated, spiced and unmistakable.
The Bourbon line
The other Yemen stock — and the busiest branch of the tree.
Bourbon
the original Yemen → Île Bourbon, now Réunion · around 1708Caramel and red-fruit sweetness, balanced acidity, a rounder body than Typica — and 20–30% more of it per tree.
Caturra
mutation of Bourbon Minas Gerais, Brazil · 1937Bright citric acidity, medium body, very clean. A dwarf, so it yields heavily and eats fertiliser to match.
Pacas
mutation of Bourbon Santa Ana, El Salvador · 1949Bourbon's sweetness on a compact plant. Round, sweet, moderate acidity — Caturra's Salvadoran twin.
Villa Sarchi
mutation of Bourbon Sarchí, Costa Rica · 1950sSweet and bright at altitude, and it stands up to wind. Parent of every Sarchimor in the next column.
SL28
Bourbon-type selection Scott Agricultural Laboratories, Kenya · 1931Blackcurrant and grapefruit over a dense, structured acidity. This is the Kenya signature. Drought-tolerant, rust-prone.
SL34
Bourbon-type selection Scott Agricultural Laboratories, Kenya · 1930sHeavier body and deeper sweetness than SL28, with less of the blackcurrant lift. Handles rain better.
Mundo Novo
Bourbon × Typica São Paulo, Brazil · 1940sChocolate and nuts, heavy body, moderate acidity. Vigorous and productive: Brazil's workhorse for eighty years.
Catuaí
Mundo Novo × Caturra Instituto Agronômico de Campinas, Brazil · 1949Sweet, clean, medium body — and less complexity than either parent. Compact and very productive. Red and yellow forms.
Pacamara
Pacas × Maragogipe ISIC, El Salvador · 1958Enormous beans and a wild cup: herbal, tropical, occasionally savoury. Loved and distrusted in roughly equal measure.
Introgressed
The branch carrying robusta DNA. All of it traces to one tree.
Híbrido de Timor
natural arabica × canephora Spotted in a Typica plantation on Timor · 1927Not grown for the cup — woody, rubbery, thin. It matters as a bridge: this is the only door robusta genes have ever walked through into arabica.
Catimor
Timor Hybrid × Caturra Portugal · 1959, then everywhereRust-resistant and productive. Below about 1,200 m the cup goes flat and woody; grown high and picked properly it can be clean and sweet. Most of its bad reputation was earned low down.
Sarchimor
Timor Hybrid × Villa Sarchi Costa Rica · 1960s — IAPAR 59, Marsellesa, Obatã, T5296A better cup than the early Catimors: sweet, clean, moderate acidity. If a rust-resistant coffee has ever surprised you, it was probably one of these.
Castillo
Colombian Catimor lines Cenicafé, Colombia · 2005Colombia's answer to rust, and most of what the country now grows. Sweet and balanced, chocolate and caramel; the good lots are very good, whatever you have read.
Ruiru 11 & Batian
rust + CBD resistant Kenya · 1985 and 2010Bred to keep the SL cup while surviving Kenyan disease pressure. Ruiru 11 trades away some sweetness; Batian gets much closer to the original.
F1 hybrids
first-generation crosses Centroamericano, Starmaya, H1 · CIRAD and World Coffee ResearchHybrid vigour: big yields and high scores together. Centroamericano is Sarchimor T5296 × Rume Sudan. Seed does not breed true, so they are cloned — Starmaya excepted.
Inside Coffea canephora
Robusta is cross-pollinating, so it is genuinely diverse — but it is sold as clones and country names rather than named varieties. You will rarely see any of these on a label.
Conilon
Espírito Santo, BrazilLow acid, heavy body, grain and cocoa. Most of Brazil's robusta, and a lot of the world's instant.
Nganda & Erecta
UgandaThe traditional Ugandan robustas — a spreading bush and an upright tree, the same species growing two different shapes.
Fine robusta
India, Uganda, Brazil, VietnamSelected clones grown and processed like specialty arabica: dark chocolate, nut and tobacco, thick body, no sourness at all.
A variety sets a ceiling, not a flavour.
Process, altitude, picking and roast decide most of what ends up in the cup — a badly handled Gesha loses to a well handled Catuaí every single time. Read the notes above as what each variety tends toward when it is grown well and roasted honestly, not as a promise.